Death of a Star
by greenleaf-in-bloom
Summary: Harry's death, and Ginny's input on it. Ginny's POV.


The Lips of Knowledge   
  
There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.   
  
Only moments before, I had told him that I loved him.   
  
Then he smiled and told me he loved me too. But then he did something I will never forgive him for. I always knew that I was meant to be there when he died, and that the last words he said would be to me. He himself denied me that. He pushed me away, into the dais where the glass ball was, and as it toppled off, of course, I caught it. It took me away from him.   
  
I will never, ever forgive them. Harry, or Voldemort.   
  
When I got back, mere moments later, his form was sprawled on the floor. His face was more beautiful then than even in life. Shadows from the candlelight flickered across it, pale steel shadows, harsh and cold. I held his hand and asked him to come back, and wept when I felt how cold his skin was. There was a small smile on his face, but even that could not console me.   
  
Bent over him there, I cried until the candle went out. I fumbled around for a wand, and muttered Lumos. When the light extended across the room and its domed ceiling, I saw Harry's wand and realized it was not his who I had picked up. I also realized that I was sitting in scattered black ash, and had picked the wand up out of it.   
  
They were both dead.   
  
I cradled Harry to me, throwing down the other wand and lifting his. His delicate fingerprints marked it. He had never polished it, never tried to clean it. That was Harry for you.   
  
Holding his cold, stiff hand, I touched the Portkey again and found myself once more in Dumbledore's office. The Headmaster was not there again, but his golden and scarlet phoenix, Fawkes, was sitting on its perch and fluttered onto my shoulder, singing a haunting, soft song. It filled me with an eerie sort of light, or so it seemed. I stopped feeling my aches and pains, except of course in my heart, and I stopped feeling the floor beneath me. Harry's hand seemed warmer, but I still knew from far away that he was dead.   
  
I didn't think then about how awful it would be to explain it to my brothers and Hermione and Dumbledore. I didn't know how terribly hard it would be, how much I would stumble over my words. All I knew then was that the last thing Harry had ever told me was that he loved me, and the last thing I ever told him was the same.   
  
After a while, I thought that as he shoved me, he might have whispered my name, and as I vanished I might have seen his lips form an apology. It grew hazy in my mind, cloudy. I remember some things distinctly, and some things not at all. I can still feel his hands pushing me back, and the smile in his eyes - his mother's eyes, they say. I can still see the tendril of red-gold hair that swept across my vision. But I can't remember what he was wearing, or even what had happened that afternoon.   
  
The days after were mixed in our world with rejoicing and mourning, even for me. I knew, much as I loathed it, that Harry had died doing what he had always been meant to do, and that he had known beforehand and hadn't tried to stop it. To my surprise, that was comforting. He knew he was going to die, and he was at peace with it. He had smiled when he told me he loved me, and he was still smiling the last time I saw him in life. He was still smiling in death.   
  
I wonder if he had second thoughts about pushing me into the dais. There was no hesitation in his mind then, I'm certain, but there was certainly hesitation before. I think he knew that he would die sooner than the rest of us realized it was even a possibility. In his fifth year I think was when he first considered it. I remember the day that I believe he found out the way. We were outside, watching the sun set, and its red-gold reflection in the water. It wasn't just us, it was Ron and Hermione and Sirius. Sirius had just been freed, and Harry seemed happier than he had been in a long time. But then a stranger smile crossed his face, and something dawned in his eyes. I think back, and hope that he didn't know all that time that he was going to die, because he never said goodbye to anyone. But in my heart, in the very bottom of my deepest soul, I know that he knew then.   
  
He was the most selfless and noble person I ever met. When I went home - I couldn't stay at Hogwarts for the rest of that year, although I returned the next - Mum and Dad told me that a large deposit had just been made into our Gringotts account, and that Harry's had been emptied the week before.   
  
Hermione and Ron were never really the same. Hermione gave up her position as Head Girl, but continued going to Hogwarts long enough to graduate. Dumbledore, who after Harry's death became quieter and more withdrawn, offered both her and Sirius positions at Hogwarts. The Defense Against Dark Arts teacher and Professor Flitwick both resigned. Sirius refused, but Hermione accepted. She seemed to deal with Harry's death in a different way than the rest of us. It hurt me to think of him, or to be where he had been, but Hermione couldn't bear to leave the school because Harry had loved it so much. Sirius and Remus Lupin and Ron all worked for the Ministry after that. Ron had always wanted to be an Auror, but there was no need for them now. He was cold and distant. I met him several times at Harry's grave, which I visited at least four times a week. He visited the memorial for Harry more often. I never did. I never could.   
  
After finishing school - Hermione was the best Defense Against Dark Arts teacher I'd had - I left home and started to work in the Herbology section of the Ministry. I grew rare and valuable plants. Neville Longbottom worked there as well. When Voldemort died, his parents regained at least scraps of themselves. They would have lucid moments. It gave Neville strength. He, too, was changed, and I often found him crying days when we were working in the office. My position gave me time to do things that I wanted to do than other jobs would. I did little office work. Instead I worked in my garden a few hours a day, rarely using magic except to Apperate to the graveyard where Harry was buried next to his parents.   
  
I suppose that was a great source of comfort to me as well. Harry had always wanted to know his parents, and now he was with them. I also smiled at the thought that one day I would be with him too.   
  
I wrote a good deal as well. For my own benefit, I wrote everything I could remember about Harry. I got several books published on alternate subjects, like the bestseller fiction novel And He Said He Loved Me Too, based, of course, on the last words Harry ever spoke to me. Everyone knew the story of what had happened, but I didn't write it for their sympathy, although that seems to be mostly what I got from it.   
  
I visited another grave, too, although it was a place I knew Harry had gone. Sometimes as I sat there, I thought that I could hear Harry's soft voice, whispering to me, and whispering to the person whose grave it was. Cedric.   
  
It had taken him a long time to get over his guilt about that, and in sixth year he told me how Sirius had done it. He had finally forgiven himself the summer after fifth year, the first summer that he lived with Sirius. He tried to remember the details of the conversation, and said it came close to this: One evening, he and Sirius had been talking, and Sirius had asked abruptly, "Harry, do you blame me for your parents' death?"   
  
"No! Of course not, Sirius!"   
  
"Well, because I thought I was helping them when I told them to use Peter."   
  
"I could never blame you for that, Sirius. You had no idea."   
  
"But you blame yourself for Cedric's death."   
  
"That was my fault, though."   
  
"You thought you were helping him when you told him to take the Cup with you. You had no idea. If you are responsible for his death, then I am responsible for Lily and James' deaths."   
I silently thank Sirius for that. For ridding Harry of the guilt that plagued him so long. I wish I had the strength to tell him thank you in person, but it would only hurt him more to remember Harry.   
  
But I still can't forgive Harry for not letting me be there when he died.   
  
I think in the end, the only thing that would hurt more than his death would be never having known him and loved him at all. But then, that's the way it is with the death of a star, twinkling in the night sky and becoming the basis for someone's dreams. I stare at the stars at night, and I apologize for not being able to forgive him. Because I know that out there somewhere, past the dark expanses of time and space, Harry is listening, and someday I will join him there, wherever he is. I know this. It is a sweet gift, knowledge. It is sweeter than the world.   
  
There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.   
  
-Proverbs, 21:15 


End file.
